A third outstanding characteristic of Pragmatism is the “deeper” view of human nature upon which, in contrast to Rationalism, it supposes itself to rest, and which it seeks to vindicate. It is this supposedly deeper view of human nature for which it is confessedly pleading when it insists, as it is fond of doing, upon the connexion of philosophy with the various theoretical and practical pursuits of mankind, with sciences like biology and psychology, and with social reform,[125] and so on. We have, it may be remembered, already intimated that even in practical America men have had their doubts about the depth of a philosophy that looks upon man as made in the main for action and achievement instead of, let us say, the realization of his higher nature. Still, few of the readers of James can have altogether failed to appreciate the significance of some of the many eloquent and suggestive paragraphs he has written upon the limitations of the rationalistic “temperament” and of its unblushing sacrifice of the entire wealth of human nature and of the various pulsating interests of men to the imaginary exigencies of abstract logic and “system.”[126] To him and to his colleagues (as to Socrates, for that part of it) man is firstly a being who has habits and purposes, and who can, to some extent, control the various forces of his nature through _true knowledge_, and in this very discrepancy between the real and the ideal does there lie for the pragmatists the entire problem of philosophy--the problem of Plato, that of the attainment of true virtue through true knowledge. Deferring, however, the question of the success of the pragmatists in this matter of the unfolding of the true relation between philosophy and human nature, let us think of a few of the teachings of experience upon this truly important and inevitable relation, which no philosophy indeed can for one moment afford to neglect. Insistence upon these facts or teachings and upon the reflections and criticisms to which they naturally give rise is certainly a deeply marked characteristic of Pragmatism. Man, as has often been pointed out, is endowed with the power of reflection, not so much to enable him to understand the world either as a whole or in its detailed workings as to assist him in the further evolution of his life. His beliefs and choices and his spiritual culture are all, as it were, forces and influences in this direction. Indeed, it is always the soul or the life principle that is the important thing in any individual or any people, so far as a place in the world (or in “history”) is concerned.